not sure if this is a late linkfest from this past sunday or an early linkfest for next sunday…. (~_^)

Patterns of selection on Neanderthal alleles in modern humans – “‘We identified Neandertal alleles that are at higher frequency than expected under a model of neutral evolution, and identify dozens of genomic locations in Europeans and East Asians at which the Neandertal alleles are the targets of positive selection. Interestingly, there is evidence for more extensive positive selection in East Asian than in European populations.'” – @race/history/evolution notes.

Paternal age and fitness in pre-industrial Finland – “‘Individuals whose fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers fathered their lineage at age of 20 were ~9% more likely to survive to adulthood than those with 40-year-old male ancestors.'” – @race/history/evolution notes.

Law alone? – “People of northwestern European descent put the least emphasis on the blood bond of a nation’s population…. The paradox presented here for many like myself is that the places inspiring the warmest feelings and that I would like most to live in are the places that tend to put the least effort into maintaining what they have. It’s tragic.” – yup. =/ from the awesome epigone.

Ethnic background influences immune response to TB – “Over the thousands of years that humans have been infected with TB, people of different ethnicities have evolved different immune mechanisms for handling the bacteria, a finding that could affect the outcome of planned trials for new TB drugs…. [D]ifferences in the way TB affects the body are also linked to ethnicity. For example, he found that most infections in Europeans are in the lungs, for example, while Asians and Africans get most TB infections in other organs.” – @new scientist. also: Scientists discover ethnic differences in immune response to TB bacterium.

Chinese People May Be at Higher Risk for Stroke Than Caucasians – “[T]he research found a slightly higher overall risk of stroke in Chinese people than in Caucasians, with a range of 205 to 584 strokes per 100,000 Chinese people age 45 to 74, compared to 170 to 335 strokes per 100,000 Caucasian people the same age. Chinese also had a higher risk of intracerebral hemorrhage, a type of stroke due to bleeding into the brain from a ruptured blood vessel, compared to Caucasian people, or 33 percent of all strokes compared to 12 percent of all strokes in community-based studies. Chinese people had a lower average age of stroke onset of 66 to 70 years-old, compared to 72 to 76 years-old for Caucasians.” – via hbd bibliography!

Poles in the Tent – “[I]f high-quality protein were the long pole in the tent, male provisioning of meat, which we see in chimpanzees, might matter quite a bit more than you would think from the number of calories alone.” – from greg cochran.

Dark Counsel From The Durants – “‘Inequality is not only natural and inborn, it grows with the complexity of civilization. Hereditary inequalities breed social and artificial inequalities; every invention or discovery is made or seized by the exceptional individual, and makes the strong stronger, the weak relatively weaker, than before.'” – dark stuff, indeed! from malcolm pollack. here’s the durants’ The Lessons of History.

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Isolated Afghans contemplate mass exodus – “The 1,100 ethnic Kyrgyz living in this isolated sliver of Afghanistan wedged between Tajikistan, Pakistan and China have been spared the violence that has plagued the rest of their country. But they have also done without the burst of foreign aid that has helped reconstruct one of the world’s poorest nations.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: A Village Invents a Language All Its Own – “The language, called Warlpiri rampaku, or Light Warlpiri, is spoken only by people under 35 in Lajamanu, an isolated village of about 700 people in Australia’s Northern Territory. In all, about 350 people speak the language as their native tongue.”

Homosexuality: What’s Choice Got to Do With it? – “But as an inveterate mocker of leftist contradictions, I will note that the SAME people who are INSISTING homosexuality is entirely genetic are precisely those who for generations now have denied and dismissed the idea that ‘race’ or ‘gender’ are anything more than ‘social constructs.’ When it comes to race and gender, they will only accept environmental explanations; but when it comes to what you do with your naughty bits, they will only permit biological alibis. For race and gender, it’s 100% ‘nurture’; for sexuality, it’s 100% nature. Like always, they make no sense. But I enjoy watching how they struggle to fit straight pegs into gay holes.” – from jim goad. (who else? (~_^) )

bonus bonus bonus: How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy – more cool stuff on t. gondii, but check this out – “Colorado State University’s Janice Moore … and Chris Reiber, a biomedical anthropologist at Binghamton University, in New York, strongly suspected that the flu virus might boost our desire to socialize. Why? Because it spreads through close physical contact, often before symptoms emerge—meaning that it must find a new host quickly. To explore this hunch, Moore and Reiber tracked 36 subjects who received a flu vaccine, reasoning that it contains many of the same chemical components as the live virus and would thus cause the subjects’ immune systems to react as if they’d encountered the real pathogen. The difference in the subjects’ behavior before and after vaccination was pronounced: the flu shot had the effect of nearly doubling the number of people with whom the participants came in close contact during the brief window when the live virus was maximally contagious.” – heh!